Website Creation Overwhelming?

I get a lot of the same kind of emails from people because they are unsure of the entire website creation process. For example, what should they do if they want a message forum or how do they accept credit card orders.

Comments

Hi Lisa
I’ve been reading your great blog & site about WebsitePalace and SiteBuildIt (which sounds like the simplest way to launch a successful site). I’m prepared to spend some money on support/hosting (prefer not to work in HTML building templates) and have a clear plan for content & traffic, but could surely use SBI’s support. But I’m confused if they are the way to go for hosting since my plan is to eventually have visitor feedback and ratings, and ability to post links to Twitter, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Its not quite “social networking” site, there will probably be a lot of visitor input and interaction.

From the start, I need it to support uploading youtube videos (preferably visitors can do this and not ask me to do it for them), adsense, and affiliates. Once the site is up with decent content, I will want and RSS feed and ability to create a forum and blog to interact with subscribers/visitors.

I don’t have the money to invest in a tailor-made site (maybe down the road). Which option can support all this (or should I be looking at different hosting for each “medium”)?